Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of potential financial loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a potential loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium and duty of care.

Friday, December 21, 2007

BOZEMAN, Mont. — On a dark highway near Anchorage, Alaska, Specialist Steven Cavanaugh of the Army, who had survived 300 missions in Iraq, was critically injured this month on Dec. 2 when his vehicle hit a moose. Specialist Cavanaugh died four days later.

In the early morning darkness in Lincoln, Mont., in October, a pickup slammed into a 830-pound grizzly bear. The driver survived, but the bear was among seven grizzlies — a record for one year — killed by vehicles this year statewide.

Wildlife-related crashes are a growing problem on rural roads around the country. The accidents increased 50 percent from 1990 to 2004, based on the most recent federal data, according to the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University here.

The basic problem is that rural roads are being traveled by more and more people, many of them living in far-flung subdivisions. Each year, about 200 people are killed in as many as two million wildlife-related crashes at a cost of more than $8 billion, the institute estimated in a report prepared for the National Academies of Science.

Ninety percent of the accidents occur on rural two-lane roads, and the most common animal involved is a deer.

“I knew it was a big bear, but I didn’t know it was a grizzly,” said Steve Sandru, the driver who hit the bear near Lincoln on the way to his job as a logger. “A grizzly was the last thing I expected to see.”

The human death toll has risen from 111 in 1995 to around 200 in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available. Officials say better designed highways would help lower the number.

“If you reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions, you would in all likelihood reduce fatalities,” said Rob Ament, research director for the Western Transportation Institute. “The priority would be to treat the hot spots, the areas with the most accidents.”

In addition to the loss of life, the accidents can be expensive. The average cost of a deer collision is $8,000, including repair, towing and cleaning up the carcass, while hitting an elk averages $18,000. If the driver strikes a much larger moose, expenses average about $30,000.

The total cost of the accidents to insurance companies exceeds $1 billion a year, the institute estimates. Pennsylvania has the most vehicle-wildlife crashes. Drivers there struck nearly 97,000 deer in the last half of 2005 and first half of 2006, according to estimates by State Farm, the insurance company.

In the report prepared for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science, the Montana institute said the number of wildlife crashes was far greater than federal statistics suggested — about 300,000 crashes involving wildlife are reported to the authorities a year — because many of the accidents are reported only to insurance companies.

In recent years, the institute estimates based on insurance industry data, the number of crashes ranged from one million to two million.

Marcel Huijser, a researcher in Missoula, Mont., who prepared the report for the Montana institute, said under-reporting of the accidents hindered efforts to prevent them.

Mr. Huijser added, “If you build a wildlife crossing in the wrong location, they won’t use it or use it to the extent you want them to.”

In a separate report delivered to Congress last month, the institute recommended ways to reduce wildlife-related accidents, including the construction of underpasses and overpasses with fences to keep wildlife off highways and directed toward safer crossings. Other methods include culling animals in places where accidents are numerous and “break the beam” systems, in which animals are fitted with collars that set off flashing lights when they approach a road.

Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, has been a large laboratory for studying measures to prevent such collisions, which had been frequent on a four-lane highway that runs through the park in the heart of the wildlife-rich Canadian Rockies. Officials there have built 24 underpasses and overpasses, and the changes have reduced collisions by more than 80 percent, park officials said.

Researchers in Montana are conducting similar experiments along a stretch of Interstate 90 near Bozeman. They have built fences and an underpass to allow animals safe passage.

If they could duplicate the results from Banff, said Mr. Ament of the Western Transportation Institute, few animals and people would die and there would be substantial monetary savings as well.

“Wildlife accidents on Bozeman Pass cost the public a million a year” in crash costs, Mr. Ament said. “With an 80 percent reduction, that would be $800,000 in savings a year.”

The accidents can also take a toll on precarious wildlife populations. The report prepared for Congress found that vehicle collisions were a major source of mortality for 21 federally endangered or threatened species, like the red wolf, kit fox, Key deer and Florida panther.

“It’s a new and dubious record,” Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, said of the seven grizzlies killed this year on Montana roads. “There are more bears and everybody drives faster, and so roads are more of a problem.”

While the accidents are not threatening the bears’ long-term survival, Mr. Servheen said, they do threaten the species’ ability to expand its range.

The animal deaths can also be traumatic for many people.

Last month, a truck driver plowed through a herd of bighorn sheep on Highway 200 near Thompson Falls, Mont. The sheep often congregate there because they eat a salty de-icer the highway department sprays on a treacherous stretch of road. More than 350 wild sheep have been killed here since 1985.

Despite numerous warning signs with flashing lights, witnesses say the truck’s brake lights never came on as it drove through the herd, killing five adult ewes and two lambs. An investigator with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is looking into the accident to see if charges are warranted.

“A lot of people in Thompson Falls take pride in these sheep and are pretty upset,” said Bruce Sterling, a wildlife biologist with the state in Thompson Falls.